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The designing daughter of shamed Bernie Madoff middleman Walter Noel ripped off the copyrighted creations of a top Australian jewelry maker for her own fledgling New York firm, a blockbuster lawsuit claims.
But Marisa Noel Brown and her socialite business partners, Ulrica Lanaro and Lillian Stern, left a bumbling paper trail that exposed their scheme, according to court papers.
In the Manhattan federal court suit, Sydney-based Dinosaur Designs — whose award-winning pieces have been featured in museum exhibitions — claims Brown’s Tre Labs bought necklaces and bracelets at Dinosaur’s New York store on Elizabeth and Prince streets and shipped them off to China to be copied.
Court papers allege that Brown’s pal Lanaro, or someone representing her, made several trips to the Dinosaur boutique between Dec. 6 and Dec. 9 last year, buying up several hundred dollars worth of Dinosaur’s unique, hand-smoothed pieces. The items were paid for with Lanaro’s credit card.
In February, Dinosaur execs were stunned when they visited the Coterie trade show at the Javits Center and spotted Tre’s sales rep, Cynthia O’Connor and Associates, taking orders for several Tre pieces that were really “unauthorized copies of [Dinosaur’s] copyrighted works.”
Brown — one of five famously flashy, tall, tanned and blond Noel daughters — launched Tre with her society pals in Fall 2008, before it was revealed that her dad was a principal player in the massive Madoff swindle.
Walter Noel’s Fairfield Greenwich fund had $7 billion of his clients’ money invested with his Ponzi-scheming pal, wiping out hundreds of unsuspecting investors. Noel allegedly pocketed $114 million and is the target of several lawsuits.
According to the suit against Tre, the purloined jewelry pieces included Dinosaur’s “Wishbone” cluster necklace and “Boulder” and “Moon Rock” bangles.
The retail price for Tre’s knockoff Boulder bracelet was $75 to $90, compared to $125 to $370 for the real Dinosaur item. Tre re-christened the $200 Wishbone necklace the “Uma” and priced it at $125.
Dinosaur fired off a cease-and-desist letter to Tre — as well as to Lanaro’s husband, Alessandro Lanaro, who represents the firm — demanding it destroy the alleged copies and fork over a list of all the retailers who ordered them.
Neither Tre nor a lawyer for Dinosaur returned calls for comment. Tre’s jewelry sales rep, Cynthia O’Connor, shut down her firm in March.